A little Horseback Riding, Cowboy Hat & the Spirit of the West!

A couple of weeks back I went horse back riding with the family into the beautiful mountains of Colorado. The crisp air, afternoon sun and the long rocky range in the backdrop made this picturesque vista perfect. A little horse back riding and a cool cowboy hat can do a lot of good for the soul, if you don't believe me try it out, but do it somewhere in Colorado. Well this trek led my thoughts way back to my childhood days in India where my best friend in school Nikul would come to my place and we would take off in the back parking lots of a government office building to pretend play that we were cowboys back in the old west. Those days were filled with idyllic musings of boyhood dreams of riding away - exploring new untamed territories, scurrying off an Indian attack, rescuing the damsels in distress and following the heart of the lone ranger in adventure pursuing gold and bringing the "wanted" to justice. Most of these stories came from the wild west comics we exchanged and most of the pretend play was never even rehearsed, it just came naturally from our imagination. We led the stories to take their own twists & turns....the plot always thickened when we would jump a 100 years in the future and play American & Russian spy's in covert operations during the cold war.

Anyway those dreams had in them an innate sense of wonder and awe about the spirit of the west which has remained with me to this day. What is the spirit of the west? For each one of us it may be different but for me it is the courage of venturing out to an unknown place, it is faith in the Lord that He is able to guide your paths, it is the not only taking hold of new territory but an opportunity to do good and spread the gospel in the land. Of course, historically it has been much more and maybe even very different, for it has taken many forms and many a trials but I see these threads have weaved and formed a vital part of those adventures and stories that made the west. 

The nostalgia of finding new places, extension of the rail lines, establishing of new cities and the leading & founding of a nation that would eventually become a melting pot for all the races of the earth. I know the spirit of the West is even much more, it is also the embodied in the smaller stories of families that went out in search of new opportunities, search for gold, search for jobs, search for new life and along the way forming the myriad threads that build a young nation. 

Why am I relating this? The idea I want to express here is simple, God puts in us desires, hopes and He fills a man's heart with the ideas of going out, taking on new territories, exploring, conquering, subduing, settling and launching others into that calling of adventure; We are wired that way. The good Lord put in each one of us a desire to be much more than what we are. Our endeavor and charge is not to kill those desires and not to let them die with the arrow wounds that fly at us from the past, present or our surroundings. It is in those encounters of our heart the evil whisperer comes and fills us with resignation, wrong ideas, leaning and crippling us with sin. Sometimes we allow ourselves to play the blame game, or the self-pity game and some times we resign to do nothing, the desire dies and so does our hearts. And that is why Yeshua cautions and guards us by quoting from Proverbs 4:23:

Which  reads: “Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of Life."

I like how Ellie in the animation movie 'Up' shouts out "Adventure is out there" - all you have to do is set out and that my friend is the spirit of the west. And even if you don't "Adventure's are still out there" and you still have to go out and live it. I have added one my favorite clips between Carl and Ellie from the movie for you to enjoy; the calling is clear once again "Adventure is out there!!"



Blessings & Shalom,


Sam Kurien